Legislative failure

Texas legislators need to figure out how to fund a budget to meet the needs of the state.

Copyright 2017: Houston Chronicle

April 19, 2017

Photo: David Williams, Austin Ridesharing

The Texas State Capitol building stands in Austin. (David Williams/Bloomberg)

The Texas State Capitol building stands in Austin. (David...

What's happening under the pink dome of our state capitol would be funny if it weren't so serious.

Something like a dysfunctional family starring in a situation comedy, the politicians running the Texas Senate and House are bickering and sniping at each other over a lot of silliness seemingly included in the Legislature's storyline strictly for entertainment value. As Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick steals scenes with his potty protection plan, it's only by contrast that House Speaker Joe Straus seems like the straight man. But what we're paying these characters to do in Austin is no laughing matter.

Forget for a moment the social conservative subplots running through this legislative session. The most important duty Texas lawmakers must fulfill is passing the budget that will bankroll our state government the next two years. And it's clear that if their job is making Texas a model for the U.S., they're coming up short.

Our lawmakers dug themselves - and us - into a deep hole in 2015 by adopting at least $10 billion in fiscally imprudent tax cuts and financial diversions. Then last year our state's top elected leaders made it clear they wouldn't even try to adequately fund government operations. They directed agencies to cobble together budgets that would cut spending by 4 percent. So they set low expectations, and now, sadly, they're failing to meet them.

The heads of state agencies and universities - people appointed during the last decade or so by those infamous tax-and-spend liberals Rick Perry and Greg Abbott - figured it would cost about $232 billion during the next biennium to effectively deliver the services Texans need. Instead, the Senate cooked up a budget of $217.7 billion and the House came up with $218.2 billion.

Lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol have let Texas down by shortchanging basic services. Sure, Straus' House came up with $500 million more than the Senate, but that's nothing to brag about when the nation's second largest state has an education system that's been ranked among the 10 worst in the nation. And while we're passing blame around, let's point a finger at ineffectual Democrats. It seems they're not even wringing their hands as the GOP wrings the budget dry without regard to its effect on our future.

Who's losing out? All of us, of course, but the most glaring deficiency is in education. A study conducted by the Center for Public Policy Priorities came to the conclusion the state needs to add a minimum of $2.7 billion to school finance during the next two years just to keep pace with rising inflation. Education funding has been under active debate on the floor of the House as late as Wednesday afternoon, but as it stood at the beginning of this week, the House budget set aside another $1.5 billion, 44 percent less than the CPPP estimates our schools need just to avoid falling behind.

And don't for a second buy the snake oil idea that these lawmakers are cutting our taxes. What they're doing in Austin underfunds public education and health services, but they know Texas children will still need to go to school and indigent people will still need health care. So back in the big cities, in the small towns and in the 254 counties where these budget cuts will hit home, even fiscally conservative school board members and county commissioners will have little choice but to raise local taxes to make up the difference.

Our state is growing, but our state lawmakers are spending less on basic services. After factoring in inflation and population growth, the budgets under debate in Austin reportedly represent a decline of about 6 percent from the last budget cycle.

Texas government doesn't have a spending problem, it has a revenue problem. Rather than driving us into a deeper ditch with more budget cuts, our legislators need to figure out how to raise enough money to adequately fund a government capable of meeting the challenges a great state will face in the 21st century. Instead, we're getting another season of a long-running show that's gotten so bad, it's hard to tell whether we're binge-watching a comedy or a tragedy unfolding before our eyes.

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